Nice touch
Rape prisoners with a glowstick, beat them till they die, kill ~100,000 innocents, fire the Iraqi army. What more can Bush do to screw over Iraq?
Damage the site of ancient Babylon while using it for a military base.
Nice touch.US-led troops using the ancient Iraqi city of Babylon as a base have damaged and contaminated artifacts dating back thousands of years in one of the most important archeological sites in the world, the British Museum said yesterday.
Military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, for example, and archeological fragments, including broken bricks stamped by King Nebuchadnezzar II around the same time, were scattered across the site, a museum report said.
The dragons at the Ishtar Gate were marred by cracks and gaps where someone tried to remove their decorative bricks, the paper said.
John Curtis, keeper of the British Museum's Near East department, who was invited by Iraqis to study the site, also found that large quantities of sand mixed with archeological fragments have been taken from the site to fill military sandbags.
''This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," Curtis said in the report.
But at least it wasn't looted like other important archeological sites.
Is the Bush administration trying to lose the war in Iraq? Because they're doing a pretty good job.
Via Juan Cole, who notes that whoever decided to put a military base there should be fired, but probably won't be.
posted by Luke Francl @ 1:29 PM |
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5 Comments:
Luke, it seems like you're saying that Archeology is more important that troop safety. Is that right? Having been a troop I'd have to take exception to that position.
Surely there was somewhere else they could've put that base. We don't need a reputation as a desecrator.
How many insurgents is this news going to recruit?
Who cares if a few moldy old ruins are destroyed- it's not as if those people invented writing or anything.
Hey, wait a minute...
Perhaps you could conceed that the commanders on the ground should make those decisions?
Even if you can't. Consider a force moving into the twin cites area (I use this as an example because I presume readers are familiar with it.)
Where would you locate your facilities?
Chaska seems out of the way and unlikely to offend any academics. I suppose that makes it the perfect choice? Not so much.
But what about Ft. Snelling? Central location, easily defensible, clear ground without powerlines for landing zones...(think that golf course is an accident?) of course there is some risk of destroying the work of historical reenactors and even some artifacts of the Westward expansion. However, compared to the tactical advantages of location and the strategic importance the site affords a commander would be remiss to choose another.
That may beg the question, if its such a great site why didn't Saddam use it? The answer is much like the reason Ft Snelling is no longer in use as a garrison here. There are advantages to remote sites as well, especially for missions like training.
However, were the mission to change to a Baghdad type mission you could be sure that it would pressed into service. Even at the risk of history.
I'm sure it was a great place for a base. And according to the article, initial attempts were made to limit the impact to the site, which is good.
But surely there were places that were less historically important that could have been used.
After all, I'm not worried about what academics think about this. I'm worried what the Iraqis think about it. It's their history, their national pride.
Wouldn't you be offended if an invading army decided to use the National Mall as a base camp, and while they were at it, scraped some names off the Vietnam Memorial? Would you want to kill the people who did that?
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